


Somewhere the planet laughs

by dragoonsbeard



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: BAMF Cloud Strife, Jenova Project (Compilation of FFVII), Jenova cloud, Misunderstandings, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, cloud goes ham, the planet is salty af
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:26:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25763638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragoonsbeard/pseuds/dragoonsbeard
Summary: The planet spites Calamities existence, she sends her golden weapon to take Jenova's place in the past.Whilst calamity rots undiscovered- Cloud makes the most of Gaia's meddling and embraces the scientists mislabeled definition of him.J E N O V AThe last Cetra, and mother to the soldier program.Somewhere the planet Laughs.
Relationships: Cloud Strife & The Planet
Comments: 14
Kudos: 194





	Somewhere the planet laughs

N O R T H E N C R A T E R 1979

The planet, its loving caress bled through soil and stone. Green threads of illumination coiled about a prone shape, this movement might have been a normal occurrence. However, hidden within its depths were silky strands which quivered with a whisper of mirth. The planet _laughed._

For it had an opportunity to wreck calamity with a pre-emptive strike worse than death.

Concealed under a plate of earth lay Jenova, who in this time- had not yet been named so. A mimic of ancient humanity she was, who’s form remained crystallised in a prison of hardened lifestream. She the calamity thrummed with anticipation- as from above were murmurs of mortal lives. Insignificant thrums of existence that will mistakenly liberate her under false pretenses of a Cetra. The humans dug, through earth and ash in chase of the promised land. Eventually their attempts were rewarded with shards of blue, glassy fragments stirred within blackened dirt. With success in sight a power hungry plight became a whirlwind of shovels, it unearthed a mighty prize.

Locked away within an embrace of brilliant azure lay a figure. A face which possessed a beauty so divine- its discoverers gazed upon it, enchanted. The tranquil face sat framed by a crescent of gold, set ablaze by tunnels of light which ricocheted about its encasement.

Ropes of solid iron rose the chrysalis from its warren and into a glow of morning light, in its wake a mass of scientists who prattled between each other in awe of this momentous sight. For bound tightly behind the shoulders of their great discovery glimmered a blade, colossal in shape and evermore promising of their intentions to _create._

A mere 10 feet below this cavern and imprisoned in stone, Calamity screeched. For her existence would not be discovered within this time. For the _Planet_ intervened to instead, gave her esteemed golden weapon, the title of _Mother._

S H I N R A M A N O R 1981

A man’s mako blue eyes simmered with sentient value. This detail went wholly unnoticed by his observers who tinkered with the mechanics of his new glasshouse. A stir of warped patterns danced over alabaster skin as the scientists in question triggered a new flow of mako inside the confines of his tank. Fixed fast upon his temple rested a crown of bolted iron, emblazoned upon its crest; _J E N O V A._ Within the cycled tide of lifestream echoed whispers, who tittered about him in glee. A breath of intent, a sigh of affection- the planet remained pleased at its interference. A scheme that left the calamity to despair in her dirt prison, forced to watch as the planets golden weapon single handedly obliterated any hope calamity ever had.

Beyond eerie emerald illuminations, stood a woman. Her gentle features were down turned with uncertainty as she fixed her gaze upon the figure suspended in mako. Her dainty hand sought to rest at the gentle swell of her stomach in dismay. The woman soon startled and shifted her white coat to conceal the slight protrusion of her belly. From behind her approached a man who emerged from the darkness, despite the woman’s wooden expression, his deep crimson eyes glittered with endearment.

Vincent. The familiarity of his face, however lacking its usual stony demeanor was unmistakable. Vincent's arrival shook forth a level of clarity from J E N O V A, who peered through his double glazed glass with ignited blue eyes. He could not hear what they spoke. Nor could he focus beneath the flutter of lifestream about him. It pulled his attentions towards a smaller gleam of light, a constellation of life threads that thrummed in tandem with the woman. A child. He could hear it. He could feel the growth of its mind and little body.

Sephiroth.

A Sephiroth without the corruption of calamity. But instead the cells of his own.

The planet _laughed._

**Strife.**

WEAPON.

-cloud- **cloud** _-cloud_

J E N O V A

.m _othermother_ _mother_

_mother_

Mother

Distress. A dark shadow that corrupted Jenova’s sweet slumber. He could feel it. A texture like smoke that curled up the cream of his limbs into the arc of his lungs. The lifestream which rested idle in every cell of his body acted as a sixth sense. An interface of information that channeled directly to him from life itself. Cloud had not yet mastered its call. He was no Cetra as the scientists had claimed. And as such the tethers between him and whatever carried ‘j-cells’ had been overrun with static. He was not a fool- other than the growing fetus that was Sephiroth, there was no doubt other more... unfortunate aberrations had been injected with Hojo’s first attempt of the JENOVA theory.

Cloud had plucked these string like connections for hours, and yet was rewarded with meager information. Perhaps the scientists experiments were beasts- already mutated from careless mako treatments. The Planet didn’t seem to mind his stubborn curiosity, he could feel its strangely hyperactive aura bounce about the back of his mind, delighted by Clouds steady acceptance of its schemes.

Whist he remained in a constant state of abhorrence from his view of green tinted glass and shifty white coats, the opportunity to end it all before it begun was immensely persuasive. Cloud endured these shortcomings in hopes that his sabotage of calamities discovery, might amount to something.

The sting of peril that flared up through these tethers had been a new experience. Mako obscured his vision, its murky olive body blurred the figures that stirred restlessly beyond the confines of his tank. The white flare of a coat wavered like heat upon tarmac, behind it a churn of black and blue.

“ _How could you let this happen!?”_

Vincent Valentine engulfed by a great fury howled at the wretch of a man before him, Hojo lips upturned in a cruel snarl as he regarded the Turk with disdain. The scientist held no fear as he stood beneath the rage of Vincent’s scarlet gaze, in contrast he drew a gun. A crack of burnt gunpowder had been feeble warning to the gaping wound torn through Valentines chest. He fell limp to stone floor mind warbled with the wicked crackles of his tormentor.

Patterns of green illuminations rippled over sallow cheeks as he bled. Vincent could do no more but lay prone upon mottled slate, vision fraught with a girdle of black. Suspended behind the blight of his vision loomed a lone silhouette. Mako intertwined about its porcelain limbs like a wreathe, an eerie radiance that swallowed his focus. Its face peered down at him, obscured by a death mask of welded iron. J E N O V A Vincent remembered, the corpse of a forgotten Cetra. Would this be the end of his existence he pondered, to bleed below a priestess of Gaia. A lone sacrifice upon an alter of murder.

However hollow and dark the caverns of its iron fringed eyes might have been, It echoed a phantom impression of awareness, and Vincent blinked up upon this inconceivable notion. Resigned to his fate. A blaze of brilliant blue ignited from within the masks sockets. Two sentient irises that remained fixed upon Vincent’s own.

It seemed, locked away within a sarcophagus of glass and green lay a being of comprehension. A Cetra who was in fact _alive._

With this last realization Vincent Valentine fell into darkness.

Overwhelmed by his inability to save Vincent from his demons, to only become a spectator of of his trauma. Cloud cursed the immobile state of his own body. Don’t be mistaken JENOVA was still in possession of all his limbs and fingers, However the unparalleled purity of mako he remained pickled in- left his appendages in a sate of severe paralysis.

There is no doubt that if this timeline were to remain as is, the only way he would _leave_ a mako chamber would be with his decapitated head in Sephiroth’s crazed hands. Whilst his intervention had ultimately changed the structure of Sephiroth’s existence, Hojo still drew breath and would manipulate him into insanity for an experiment. There is also the curious case of his missing fusion sword, he hoped it hadn't been taken apart for science.

Night and day interchanged in an eternal blur, Jenova’s grasp on the fissures of time had become an amorphous experience. With only a rise of pearly bubbles to offer any indication time had moved at all.

A twang of frayed strings snapped back in Clouds mind, the tethers once more had broadcasted a cry of loss. Other failed experiments he speculated, finally put from their misery as Hojo made room for a new project. This persistent transmission sought to frustrate Cloud, for its existence was a strange and new experience. He had no understanding on how to traverse its web nor a grasp on how exactly he had acquired such a skill. He imagined it to be similar to how the previous JENOVA had twisted her way in through minds overaught by reunion. Except for the factor of his purification under Aerith’s ghostly hand. With the calamities cells purged from his system, reunion is but a memory. Perhaps this ability lingered on- his cells adapted to the call and copied it for his own?

The possibility to control another's mind left a hollow pit in bis gut, Cloud would not dare fell such a fate upon anyone. Instead he would use it for more... lucrative matters- information gathering, communication. The like.

Communication he pondered, a pair of dim scarlet eyes flashed across his vision. Hojo had injected Vincent with J-cells hadn’t he?

A nefarious darkness, unfathomable in its size swallowed any sense of sound. The low buzz that had once accompanied quiet- remained missing. For this fact alone Vincent Valentine had known that this void realm was not one of the living. Could it be death? It seemed unlikely, for the possibility that Hojo would waste potential test material would be inexcusable.

Unfathomed as this abyss might have been, Vincent couldn’t help but be thankful that his mind lay here- rather than awake during the good doctors plight.

_Vincent_

The Turk spun through shadows to peer out into darkness. He met only a scene of oblivion; undisturbed by the thin whisper he’d sworn called him.

_Vincent_

It beckoned him once more, Fainter than a breath of air lost within the void. Vincent had wandered towards it mystified by its emergence. Like a specter the dulcet voice would sigh through shadows beyond his reach, formless it would manifest in a breeze behind the shell of his ear. An insistent murmur.

_Vincent_

“Why do you call?”

A scuttle of _curiosity-success-greeting_ swept behind Vincent’s eyes, A flux of intent that trickled about his mind in a glide of energy. Valentine had seized his head in shock, a small ache lingered but dispersed just as quickly. The Turk swiveled where his stood- face open with astonishment as he scoured his surroundings.

“What... _are you?”_

_mirth-relief-vincentvincet-V i n c e n t_

Warmth surged into his mind, and Vincent startled. The sheer fond nature of of the intrusion is what had thrown him off. Hostility and rage- two things he had plenty experience of, but this? This benevolent rush of concepts that became evermore vexing in its appearance. He was not prepared for.

“my name.” Valentine settled his anxious shift, eyes which had hunted the dark faltered “you know it.”

For a moment he had braced himself for the unusual method of communication, knees bent in preparation, the Turk awaited a response. The endless shadow that engulfed him was eerie, its inky embrace gave no sense of comfort nor promise. And as Vincent remained lost in its body- he felt alone. For the first in a long time Vincent longed for company.

A flare of white hot light blinded him, its staggering appearance wretched the Turk’s frontal lobe into a state of chaos. Static snarled at his ears- its fritzed nature arose to a volume so immense that Vincent could only imagine the sound to originate from his skull- rather than the darkness about him. Images darted about his irises, flashes of inconceivable notions unreachable in their mayhem. Agony quickly whited out his nerves only to leave a sensation of obscure numbness- then it _came._

 _It came to him._ A steady flow of mellow images bordered by a strange green glow. The shine of large crystal that gleamed before a burn of morning light- a being encased-scientistscientistsTankktank **Glass** \- a glass wall illuminated to reveal a figure, a smooth steel mask that obscured a face of- buringblue **burning** blue gazed down at him- knowledgeknow v i n c e n t. Watching him _knowing_ him.

J E N O V A

_h e l l o v i n c e n t_

N I B E L H E I M 1986

A Tempestuous storm frothed clouds of white and wrathful torrents of sharded ice. Its gaping maw devoured what remained of the sky in its greed. Below, its harrowed cries howled through a mountain dwelling. Its cold body struck wood and stone, a viscous beginning to the night. Engulfed within the mellow warmth of home lay a woman. Upon her ivory brow dripped beads of moisture, they curled about the swell of her pallid cheek as she roared in torment.

Sigrid Strife had always been a fierce woman, forged through hardship and inherited through generations. She was not one to beg or cry, too stubborn and proud for anything less. But as she swaddled her newborn child in cloth, his delicate skin still thick with blood. She _begged_. To the old gods, to the new, the snow sprites and the planet itself. That her blue lipped babe would _breathe._

Viridscent tendrils unseen by the human eye danced and weaved themselves through soft flesh and feeble bone, a flush of pink bloomed in the child's pale cheeks as the frigid blue of death made way for warmth. Through the harrow of darkness emerged a wail, a cry of life that echoed the clamor of the planet. The planet who laughed, forever overjoyed by this chance.

Sigrid Strife enveloped her babe who yowled louder than the storm beyond them, trembling hands soothed the newborn with a gentle caress upon his sweet face. Eyes opened for their first time to reveal a pair of vivid sapphires. Sigrid startled.

“The sky would be jealous” she intoned voice a mere whisper in the dark “with eyes like those”

As she tended to her charge Sigrid pondered on the howl of her child that rivaled even a roar of the heavens. A blue so brilliant and a cry so momentous, he would block out the sky in comparison.

“like a cloud” she mused, small dinky fingers latched fast upon her own and Sigrid smiled “Hello, little Cloud. Who brings strife to the skies”


End file.
